It’s hard for me to do things in half measures, so this ended up getting long as hell. Because If I’m going to explain Taylor Swift to y’all numbskulls I’m going to do it right. Plus she has a new album coming out in a matter of days so I gotta get all my Babble peeps caught up. So brace your butts to learn more about T-Swizzle than you thought you wanted to know. She’s a generation-defining artist at this point like-it-or-not, so IMO even if you dont listen to her music it’s still worth knowing a decent amount about her cus if Taylor Swift’s career trajectory continues on its current path she ain’t going away for a long long time.

I’ve split up her discography into a few parts. And to cap things off I’ll give you guys my first impressions of her new album which i havent heard yet but i will by the time I’m done with this. This first post will probably be the longest one cus I wrote this long intro of thoughts that didnt fit into the main discography reviews.

Since I started exploring her music more she quickly became my most listened to female artist. Her songs are easy to listen to and easy to relisten to. Once her music clicked for me I’ve never gotten sick of it. But why? What made her connect with me (and so many other people).
She goes to great lengths to be as un-dislikeable as possible, her whole persona is full of positivity, fun, and playfulness. She keeps changing genres and successfully winning over new fans each time without losing her old ones. And she somehow does it all while writing the same handful of songs over and over.

Remember that time Damon Albarn got in hot water for making a flippant comment about her not writing her own songs? It’s not uncommon for pop stars to not be songwriters, but obviously he didn’t think for one second about who he was talking about, because of all the pop stars currently out she’s by far the one who’s come closest to making “songwriting” her entire identity.

If you see interviews where she’s allowed to talk about songwriting (as opposed to interviews where they ask about celebrity shit) she will go on and on about how she wrote each song, what the inspirations were, how they came up with the arrangement, and so on. She’s passionate about the structure and form of songwriting in a way that reminds me a bit of interviews I’ve seen with Andy Partridge where he’ll go on and on about every detail of his various songs. not that her songs are as complex as his of course.
Though I do wish she’d pick up some of that complexity. Her writing has about as much harmonic complexity as Bob Dylan. And while she makes this work for her, I’d really like to hear her develop more in this area as she gets older. The day Taylor learns how to effectively use diminished chords or jazz harmony it will be over for the rest of us.
She’s gonna have an EGOT eventually (mark my words this will happen, she’s a whore for awards) so when she’s writing her Tony award winning musical I hope she’s reached the point where she can include more varied chords and harmony into her songs.

But Swift doesnt need to be complicated, the simplicity is the whole point. You remember those videos of musicians mashing tons of pop songs together because they all share the same chord structure? These were always amusing, and one of the reasons why is that these mashups forced us to notice that even though the chords are the same we still perceive all these songs as separate and distinct in their own right. One of Taylor Swift’s biggest talents is in finding ways to use these same tried and true chord progressions over and over yet still making each song sound like a different song (most of the time).
At some point early on she learned how to write the “perfect” pop song. And ever since she has continued to write that song over and over again. Why deviate from the ideal formula if it works every time?
I remember when I was writing songs as a teenager I had this thing where I couldn’t use the same chord progression or a similar tune or vibe over again, every song had to be completely different from the last. And this resulted in songs that were all over the map in quality. But Taylor doesn’t give a shit about whether she’s used the same chords before. She’s a genius in that one very specific narrow spectrum. She even leans into the similarities of her songs by making her own mashups when she plays the acoustic portion of her shows.

Another big strength she has that I rarely see talked about is that she has excellent diction and phrasing. the way her lyrics roll off the tongue make her songs really satisfying to sing along with. She knows just the right way to structure and sing a phrase to maximize it’s aesthetic impact, makes sure the melody and lyrics comes through loud and clear. Often the way in which she sings something will add to the hook of the song, or at least enhance it’s clarity and make the tune pop more. And she’s gotten better at this over the years which you can tell if you compare her vocals on the rerecordings to the originals.
As to her actual vocal skill, she wasnt a great singer for quite a while. Early live performances are really pitchy and she didnt have the best control of her tone. She was generally adequate, especially in the studio, but hardly world class. If you’re listening to the original versions of her albums I’d say theres a notable improvement of her voice around Red/1989 and then she leveled up again during the pandemic. She’s obviously done a lot of practice and training to get her voice under control over the years. And this paid off big time since now she can sing nearly studio-quality vocals for over 3 hours straight every night at her shows barely taking any breaks.

She is song-oriented almost to a fault. I think I counted maybe one brief guitar solo in her entire discography (“Forever and Always”), maybe two or three short instrumental sections in total. She’s here to sing her songs and by damned nobody is going to take any leads but her. Some of her more arena-oriented rock/synth-pop songs would have benefitted from some solos or instrumental sections. But that’s not what anyone should be listening to her for anyway. She loves writing bridges though. Bridges are more or less the guitar solos of Swift’s songwriting.

The difference in quality between her singles and her album tracks isn’t often that large, especially the further into her discography you go. With most pop artists you could listen to an album knowing nothing about it and still probably guess which songs were the singles. But Taylor’s albums aren’t always like that, she’s actually made some terrible choices for singles over the years.

I think that she’s still got plenty of her best work ahead of her. She’s at her peak right now and I dont see her slowing down anytime soon. but I’m not convinced that she will ever make a front to back great album, because most of her albums are too long. she’s the kind of songwriter who wants to release every song she writes. And she has a fanbase willing to hear every song she writes. This makes for overlong albums. This is a flaw that you’re just going to have to get used to. But nothing is stopping you from cutting all her albums down to just 40 minutes of the best tracks if you want.

Anybody can learn to play a Swift song because almost all of her songs are 4 chords in a major key (can you play C G Am F? Congratulations, you can now perform every Taylor Swift song), anybody can sing her melodies because they’re simple and can easily be transposed to different keys or placed in various musical contexts. She does the opposite of melisma. Instead of singing all over the place she is very precise with delivering her melodies.

She writes about her own life and relationships but she does it in a vague enough way that her listeners can read what they want into the lyrics if they want to. She uses a lot of common idioms and phrases which will make the songs pop back into your head when hearing those phrases appear in a different context. Her melodies rarely come across as over-wrought, instead of thinking about her music like “damn what an ingeniously constructed hook”, it’s more like “thats a really nice song”. Verses are often just as good as the chorus and the bridges are often the best parts.
You could probably pull the solo piano test on just about every Swift song. Had she been born in a previous generation I could see her being a Carol King type, writing pop tunes for various hitmakers of the time. Taylor has done this a couple times (“This is What you Came For” by Rhianna is probably the most successful song she’s written for someone else) but hasnt done it often.

WTF is the deal with “Taylor’s Version”?
To make a long story short after her first 6 albums her record deal was up and she wanted to switch labels. her old label didnt like that so they sold the rights to her discography out from under her without giving her the opportunity to buy her own music. There was some other drama too, but the result was that she decided to rerecord her first 6 albums so she would own versions of her music. This is a weird as hell career move. But somehow it’s actually been successful, partly because she’s added an EP or more of new material to each one, and also partly because the majority of the rerecordings are superior to the originals. Further still, because the release of these rerecordings is happening simultaneously with the peak of her success it’s resulted in a major reappraisal of her early music.
Like imagine Stevie Wonder in the mid 70s decided to rerecord his 60s albums. Or if late-60s Beatles decided to take another crack at Please Please Me. What if Sticky Fingers era Stones redid Englands Newest Hitmakers? Sure nobody was asking for these projects to happen, they would be unnecessary and maybe the artists would be better off working on new music instead, but who could deny that the new versions would probably be better? Taylor is currently in her prime as a vocalist and she can afford top of the line production quality. So why not gaslight the public as to the quality of her original albums? If the goal was to replace her original discography she’s been successful. All the bonus tracks add a lot of value too.

Taylor Swift (Self Titled) (2006)
Unquestionably her worst album, but it’s not that bad. it’s about on the same level as any competent country artist of the era (not a high bar).
The biggest problem with this album is immediately obvious, the vocals are bad. her voice is so squeaky, untrained, and youthful that much of this album sounds like a child singing and that’s a level of cringe that can be hard to get past. She also sings with an exaggerated country accent that isn’t even consistent within individual songs.
“Teardrops On My Guitar” and “Tim McGraw” were the main singles, and the rigid production holds these tunes back a lot. They have decent melodies but the performances are so lifeless and stiff, with Teardrops in particular having a really incessant sing-song nursery rhyme tune. Even the slightest hint of feel to the instrumental tracks would go a long way to improving these.
The best track is “Our song” which nails the Swift pop-formula for the first time: lyrics that tell a dorky little relationship story, a strong bridge, a bouncy chorus with a tune that gets drilled into your head, and a bunch of girly inflections for extra flair. The acoustic live version featured in the Eras tour movie is better than the studio version.
“I’m Only Me When I’m with You” is the other highlight. It’s a power pop song and not very countryish at all. She wrote it when she was 13! But her vocals sound especially awful on it (was this recorded in a different studio or something? It doesn’t fit with the rest of the record at all). This one has big room for improvement when the re-recording is released.
The other upbeat songs are ok but not that distinctive. “Picture To Burn” being the best of these, even though it’s a pretty bog-standard country song. theres an early version of the song where Taylor sings the words “i’ll tell them you’re gay” at the end of the first verse which is kinda funny.
Pretty much everything else is a dull ballad that goes nowhere, basically every song I haven’t mentioned by name goes in one ear and out the other.

Taylor Swift (Taylor’s Version) (2025)
Is Taylor’s Version better? Probably
*OK this is one of the ones she hasn’t released yet. She has a lot of unreleased early songs to pull from, so this will probably be pretty substantial in terms of the vault tracks. But the biggest thing with this record will be the massive overhaul of the production and her adult vocals replacing her teenage singing. If any of you bother to sample the youtubes I’ve included you’ll notice how drastically different her voice sounds between this album and the songs I’ll clip for the other albums which will mostly be the rerecorded versions. Undoubtedly this will be the most improved of all her rerecordings by far.

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Fearless (2008)
And here she starts to crank out the pop bangers. From this point forward you can generally rely on pretty much any given Taylor Swift song to at the very least be broadly pleasant and tuneful. Even the worst songs on this album are easy on the ears and with melodies that I can bring to mind fairly easily. This is the case for pretty much her whole discography from here on out. Even the songs I dislike are always still competent in this basic way.

Her voice is stronger than on the debut, and she’s reduced the country twang elements significantly. This is an acoustic-guitar driven power-pop album with the occasional mandolin banjo and fiddle popping up in the instrumentation.
Her debut had it too but this album goes all in on one of Taylor’s default vibes: the “bouncy” feel. Her songs almost never swing, but they frequently bounce. Which is what I call this walking pace/head-bob almost march-like feel a lot of her songs tend to take. Once I noticed this I started hearing it everywhere.

Her two breakthrough singles are both on this album. And even though she’s moved far beyond them at this point for many people Taylor Swift is still primarily defined by “Love Story” and “You Belong With Me”. Both songs are almost too iconic to even be coherently reacted to.

Love Story is the quintessential early Taylor Swift song. Maybe you’ve heard it way too many times and are sick of it. But I never get sick of how the lyric and arrangement are perfectly wedded together. The gradual build until the last chorus delivering the climax of the song’s marriage proposal narrative matching the key change is so on the nose it’s comical. but its delivered with such earnestness and without irony whatsoever. I won’t blame anyone if they want to hate on this track since the cheese is off the charts, but “Love Story” is a song that will be on the first page of songwriting 101 books for years to come. A+++ perfect pop song, I can hear this a million times and never tire of it.
Also, it uses the “romeo and Juliet” lyric gimmick more effectively than Genesis on The Cinema Show. Just saying.

I dont have too much to say about “You Belong With Me” beyond pointing out how it’s only a couple heavier electric guitars removed from being a cheap trick song. The lyrics are what makes this one stick out more than the other power-pop tunes on the record, loaded with pleasant little phrases that roll off the tongue. the “she wears high heels i wear sneakers…” prechorus is the best part.
I wager the rest of this album is overlooked more because the other lyrics aren’t quite as distinctive as on those two hits. But there’s still plenty more good stuff.

The title track is power-pop bliss. reminds me of “Radiation Vibe” or another similar early Fountains Of Wayne song. Great track.
“Hey Stephen” is pure sunshine, with delightful humming leading the way through one of her prototypically bouncy beats. I like how she rhymes “angel” with “rain, so”.
“Tell Me Why” is more straight up power-pop. Love this song. Especially dig the bit where Taylor sings “how to ruin someone’s perfect daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy”. One of my favorite choruses on the album too.
“Forever and Always” is a late-album highlight. The rhythm section is kinda cookin’ on this one surprisingly, and it’s got a great cinematic bridge.

There are couple ballads I could do without. “White Horse” and “Fifteen” are both just alright. Lyrics are directed at giving young girls advice which is nice but not being the target audience they kinda lose me.
The back half of the album largely falls off with a bunch of kinda middling tracks. Unlike the first album though, even if these land on the more bland side of things I can still remember how they go.

Fearless (Taylor’s Version) (2021)
Is Taylor’s Version Better? Yes
The Vault tracks here are kind of underwhelming. Mostly they’re on par with the lesser tracks in the album’s back half. The exception being “Mr Perfectly Fine” which has a great chorus and a playful tune in the same vein as “Hey Stephen”.
Where this release shines is in the original album tracks are all superior to the originals. Not only is the production beefed up and more powerful, but her voice is no longer that of a teenager, which changes the context of the songs a lot. Now the songs come across as an adult singing about youth instead of a teen singing about herself which works to the album’s benefit.
I pretty much only listen to this version of the album, I only spun the original a couple times for the sake of comparison. Taylor’s voice is so much stronger and the country accent is gone completely. It’s kind of uncanny how these rerecordings come off, it’s like exactly the same album but also not, differences are everywhere if you listen for them, but you could also put this on and not be able to tell.

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Speak Now (2010)
No more Ms nice girl! Taylor’s got an attitude now. This is the album where her lyrics start to get much more interesting. She doesn’t need to write about naive romantic teen fantasies anymore, because she has real experiences in her life to write about now, real bad experiences!
This album has multiple songs attacking people who were mean to her. The best of which is “Mean”. Some critic wrote about how Taylor was a shitty singer or whatever and she was like “ooooo what a meanie, i gotta tear down those naughty critics!” To be fair to Taylor, critics were pretty harsh on her back then, but to be fair to the critic, she actually wasn’t that good of a singer back then so he was kind of right. Anyway the song itself is great. One of the most upbeat and singalong-able tracks. The bridge reaching its peak with a cheeky sing-speak line points the way to her doing that again on many future songs: “All you are is mean, and a liar, and pathetic” a great little soundbite moment.

“You can put me down with just one single blow but you don’t know someday I’ll be big enough so you can’t hit me and all you’re ever going to be is mean.” Funny how this feels prescient considering that she actually is big enough to be critic-proof now. It’s by far the most country song on the album, it’s got a banjo and a bit of a hoedown-like arrangement, and that’s basically it for country music on this album. Mostly this is a singer-songwriter album. also the closest thing to a rock album she’s made too, “Story Of Us” is and “Haunted” are solid rock songs, fitting in with a mid-00s Paramore/evanescence kind of vibe. The best rock track on the album for me is “Better than Revenge” aimed at romantic rivals who steal yo man. It rocks surprisingly hard and while “menacing” is one emotion that Taylor might not be able to convincingly pull off it’s fun to hear her try. The obvious inspiration for this track is Parmore’s “Misery Business”, but Paramore dont have a chorus with big “Woah-oh!!” in it so Taylor wins.

“Dear John” is a power ballad about how john mayer is a douchebag, which is a theme I can get behind. The lyrics are good but It’s too uneventful over its runtime to justify 7 minutes. She repeats the chorus over and over and over. Seeing as how the song is ripping on Mayer, a guitar solo actually would have made thematic sense here and the song had room for it, but nope she just hammers in that chorus like it’s Hey Jude.

Worst song on the album is “Never grow up” which is a baby song for babies. Put that as track 1 on the Taylor Swift lullaby remix compilation right there. “Last Kiss” is also a snore. Deluxe edition bonus tracks “Ours” is catchy but “Superman” is weak. The song inspired by the Kanye VMA incident “Innocent” is also one of the more mundane songs on the album unfortunately.

The other highlights on the album all show Taylor still going strong on her power pop kick,
The two opening tracks “Mine” and “Sparks Fly” carry on where “Fearless” left off. Both terrific tunes, great choruses solid verses, standard pop-rock arrangements but pulled off as well as you could ask for. “You made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter” is a great line.
Closer “Long Live” is similar and a nice way to close the album. “Back To December” is a OK ballad. I like how she sings the chorus like it’s a run-on sentence.

the first really successful ballad of Swift’s career, I’d say is “Enchanted”. It’s ludicrously sappy with overdone strings and a huge bombastic chorus, but the song is about the emotion of first-impression infatuation so the arrangement is well-matched. If you can embrace the cheese this is a good one. She would get even better at capturing a romantic atmosphere in the future.

The comedic title track is one of my favorite Swift songs. Not to get into weird sexism but I can’t help but think that it would never in a million years occur to a male songwriter to write a novelty song about the rom-com cliche of somebody interrupting a wedding during the “speak now or forever hold your peace” part of the ceremony. This is about as firmly into “girl stuff” thematic territory as it gets. The song is intentionally ridiculous, with lyrics full of silly lines describing the various elements of this wedding “gown shaped like a pastry” and “snotty little family” and the strategy to execute the plan “I’ll meet you when you’re out of the church at the back door”.
Classic Taylor song-structure at play here with the verses developing the story and the bridge serving as the narrative climax (“horrified looks from everyone in the room”). Every lyric is quotable, and if it isn’t a catchy songofagun I don’t know what is, toe-tappin’ and sing-songin’ and head-boppin’.

This album took a bit longer to grow on me than some of the others, the production isnt as varied as the albums following this would be and some of the lesser songs drag since they repeat too much and lack the tight arrangements of future Swift records. But some of my favorite songs of hers are on here too. Commercially it was (relatively) less successful than her other albums too without as many big hits, so this one is probably likely to remain one of her more overlooked and underrated records, but I’d say it’s the best one so far.

Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) (2023)

Is Taylor’s Version Better? Yes
Similar story as Fearless TV with this one. Across the board improvement to everything. Instruments are better, vocals are at the top of her game, production is far more powerful. The already dwindling country influence is minimized even further. The songs are easier to take seriously when sung by Taylor as an adult as opposed to her as a teenager.
There’s no reason to listen to the original version except for the sake of comparison, and when I reviewed the album above it is this version I was listening to most of the time.
The vault tracks are a better batch than Fearless. “I Can See You” has guitars that sound a bit like “London Calling”. Nice arrangement, catchy tune. Like this one a lot. Sounds bit St Vincent-ish maybe.
“Electric Touch” has a clunky guest verse from Fall Out Boy but a pretty nice power pop chorus. “Timeless” is a bit weak. “When Emma Falls In Love” “Foolish One” and “Castles Crumbling” are all taylor-by-numbers in a good way. All still better than the weaker third of the original record.

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Tune in next time for another exciting installment of Ken reviews Taylor Swift.